Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: 2026 Edition | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

What this episode is about

The discussion reflects on the transition from the holiday season back to regular life, highlighting a sense of mixed feelings about re-engagement with reality. Robert shares lighthearted moments from their time off, including receiving unique gifts from Sophie, such as weapons that have become part of their annual tradition, emphasizing their camaraderie and shared experiences.

Key takeaways

• New Year, new reality check: holiday euphoria fades, but so does the urge to stay ignorant.
• Gift-giving with knives: the ultimate way to say 'I care—armed with practicality.'
• In the game of identifying misinformation, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
• When you explore history, remember: the truth is often crazier than Hollywood's best scripts.
• Sipping on Baja Blast? Only if Mountain Dew writes the check; otherwise, stick to Schweppes.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Sophie Lerman (Host) · 11 min speaking
• Robert (Guest) · 17 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Sophie Lerman, Mountain Dew Baja Blast
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Google LLC, Annie Jacobson, DuckDuckGo, John Rubel
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Occupy Wall Street, Heinrich Himmler, Trans Metropolitan, Mao
4. 25:00 – 27:38: Elron Hubbard

Notable quotes from "Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: 2026 Edition | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"

• I'll be leading this episode. I am your executive producer, Sophie Lerman. I'm going to ask Robert some of your questions. Robert, how you doing, buddy?

  about Sophie Lerman · at 0:07

• Mhm. Let's Let's do it. Let me get a slug of my Mountain Dew Baja Blast.

  about Mountain Dew Baja Blast · at 2:56

• On the Nuke episodes, I started reading that Annie Jacobson book. I realized that there's a number of people who have some good issues with that book, including some I…

  about Annie Jacobson · at 7:18

• I'm hoping to find this next year like a search engine solution that I'm happier with. cuz nothing that we've got right now is better than Google was like 6 years ago. but I…

  about Google LLC · at 9:33

• There were a number of books involved in that. Himmler was a heavy lift. A number of books involved in that.

  about Heinrich Himmler · at 10:38

• I remember as a kid during the Yuguslav civil war and the genocide in Bosnia catching some news like live news footage from Sievo and thinking that.

  about Yugoslav civil war · at 13:44

• Young adult. and then I was really influenced by Occupy Wall Street. I was there at Zucati Park for a couple of days. I saw little bits of some of the regional ones and I just…

  about Occupy Wall Street · at 14:57

• Oh man. honestly, I feel like if I if he was alive, I would make [ __ ] $50 million doing a podcast with Elron Huard where I just explain different cults to Elron Hubard and he…

  about Elron Hubbard · at 26:34

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Sophie Lerman — Person · Co-host / interviewer · 2 mentions · first at 0:07
  She leads the episode as executive producer, asks audience questions, and banters with Robert about the show and research practices.
• Annie Jacobson — Person · Referenced author (source evaluated/criticized) · 1 mention · first at 7:18
  Her nuclear-related book is cited as a source Robert started but then cross-checked due to critiques, prompting him to consult additional works.
• Heinrich Himmler — Person · Referenced prior episode subject (bastard) · 1 mention · first at 10:40
  Used as an example of a "heavy lift" multi-book research topic; listeners request more coverage.
• Elron Hubbard — Person · Hypothetical guest / referenced cult leader · 1 mention · first at 27:05
  Robert jokes about making a podcast with Hubbard critiquing other cults, framing him as exceptionally skilled at cult-building.
• John Rubel — Person · Referenced expert/source · 1 mention · first at 7:28
  Mentioned as an additional perspective Robert read (essays) to add context and triangulate claims in nuclear episodes research.
  Including some I discussed in the episode. So I read two other books and I read that John Rubel's essays and stuff. because they provided like more context and when I looked at the stuff, okay, there's people who have like issues with this.
• Mao — Person · Potential future episode subject (heavy lift) · 1 mention · first at 10:29
  Listed alongside Nixon as a complex topic requiring extensive research and multiple books.
  I haven't done Mao yet for the same reason. I do those heavy lifting episodes periodically throughout the year. The Nuke one was a heavy lift.

Books & papers

• Trans Metropolitan — Book · Influential reading (career inspiration) · 1 mention · first at 14:35
  Robert cites the comic series (journalist protagonist) as energizing his interest in journalism as a young adult.
  And then I don't know, like as a an 18, 19year-old reading Trans Metropolitan for the first time. It's a comic book series with a journalist as a protagonist that's set in the…

Companies & orgs

• Google LLC — Company · Referenced tool (criticized search platform) · 2 mentions · first at 8:12
  Discussed as a degraded search experience and as a source of misleading AI summaries; Robert recommends tactics to avoid AI summaries.
• DuckDuckGo — Company · Alternative tool (recommended search engine) · 1 mention · first at 9:41
  Robert says he is experimenting with it as a better current alternative to Google and notes similar tactics can be used there.
  With. cuz nothing that we've got right now is better than Google was like 6 years ago. but I found duck.go generally better than Google now. And doing the minus AI, thing gets…

Products & tech

• Mountain Dew Baja Blast — Product · Comedic prop / beverage reference · 2 mentions · first at 2:58
  A running joke during the Q&A; Robert drinks it and they riff about sponsorship and quality.

Places & events

• Occupy Wall Street — Event · Formative political event · 1 mention · first at 14:57
  Robert describes being at Zuccotti Park and being dissatisfied with both mainstream and movement media coverage, influencing his journalism path.
• Yugoslav civil war — Event · Early influence on career interest · 1 mention · first at 13:44
  Robert recalls watching live news coverage during the war as a child, inspiring respect for conflict reporting.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 Happy new year everybody. Welcome to Behind the Bastards. I'll be leading this episode. I am your executive producer, Sophie Lerman. I'm going to ask Robert some of your questions. Robert, how you doing, buddy?

0:15 Uh, I'm doing, you know, it's it's that fun time of the year where the holidays are over. quite also I can feel it it coming the real world having to get back into the real world you know so that that part's not great the like looming knowledge that

0:35 the stuff that you were like ah the world's over news is over I don't have to pay attention to anything for the next period of time well that period of time has come to an end and it's it's time to re-engage with reality I'm at that part of the year so you know mixed Yeah. What was a a highlight for you with over your semi time off?

0:56 Uh, I don't know. Not Not really any particular highlight. I just didn't do much.

1:01 Excuse me. Your we had a party. Thank you. And your highlight wasn't starting fire with the lightsaber torch I got.

1:10 Yeah, you got me a lightsaber torch that I started a fire with. That was fun. Uh, you got me clicker. That was fun.

1:16 You I did. You did. You looked very cool that night. Robert Robert got me uh every year Robert gets me some kind of really cool weapon. Uh at the beginning of of 2025 he got me a Bowie knife after I had surgery. Everybody else sent flowers. Not my business partner. Robert got me a really cool axe one year. A machete.

1:37 Mhm. What you called Sophie? This is your purse knife. Which was one of my favorite things you've ever said to me. And this year

1:43 everyone needs a purse knife. Yeah. You got me this thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a It's a Moroccan like uh ceremonial dagger. So, you know, you're supposed to It's like a It's a I think it's like a 100 years old. You're supposed to wear it on weddings and and kind of fancy events like that. I can do I could stand to do some rehab on the blade for you.

2:02 Um cuz it's kind of dull at the moment. But yeah, you could you could cut you could cut like a

2:07 like a like a goat's throat with that if you had to. If you're being attacked by a goat and had to defend yourself with a knife, you know, it would work for that.

2:14 It's pretty cool. You also one year for my birthday got me this uh like horseshoe knife that's like for like that looks like a horseshoe but it's for like a cheese board. I get compliments on all the time

2:28 and I use Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that knife. Robert's a great giftgiver everybody. Anyways,

2:33 it's easy if you're just getting knives. Yeah. But you know, nobody gives me a knife the way you give me a knife. You know what I mean?

2:38 Thank you. Um, we got 481 comments on the thread asking for for questions for this Q&A as of time of recording, which is New Year's Day, everyone.

2:50 Mhm. Uh, I'm going to ask as many as many as we have time for. You ready? Mhm. Let's Let's do it. Let me Let me get a slug of my Mountain Dew Baja Blast.

3:02 Shut the [ __ ] up. That's what you're drinking. Yeah. Is it good? Sugar-free Baja Blast.

3:07 Do I need to drink that? Cuz I I've got a I've got a schwep. Is that how you say? I don't even know if that's how you say it.

3:13 That schweps. Got a schweps. Yeah, that seems that sounds right. I know what you're talking about.

3:18 That's a good ginger. Wait. Uh, do I need to drink that? I wouldn't recommend it. It's not good.

3:25 Fair enough. Um, unless you want to sponsor us, Mountain Dew, then Yeah, sure. Then it's great.

3:30 Then we'll say whatever you want. Anyways. Mhm. Uh, what are your tips and tricks for identifying false information while doing your research?

3:41 Well, hm, that's tough because there's such like a wide variety of false information, right? And and and some there's not really any basic tips that can help. I call this like goodnatured disinformation or good-natured bad information. And it's no one's trying to propagandize you. No one's trying to like [ __ ] with you. It's just a false version of reality has spread because somebody got a story wrong and started telling it and other people have been like retelling it and and and adding on into it. And if there's not like an agenda, that's kind of hard. You just have to actually dig into like what the work historians have done. Um I would say as a general rule, if something sounds too good to be true, like if it's exactly what you want to believe about a really complicated and difficult situation, you should take a second look at it. Um, and if it just sounds like too cool and wacky and like something in

4:32 a movie, like a lot of times that is true. A lot of times history is crazier than anything that winds up in a movie. But if there's like a specific anecdote that I'm like, I don't know, I'll just like type a description of that anecdote in and then uh I'll I'll put in like his ask historians Reddit or something like that to see if and that gets rid of the lowhanging fruit, right? If it's common disinformation or a common just like inaccuracy that gets spread around, someone who knows their [ __ ] will have talked about it there and we'll have sources, right? So, you're not just relying on a Reddit post. You can look back, you can find where the myth has been busted. You can also just like type in again like a a brief description of the anecdote comma myth comma you know something like that to see if like it has been discussed in that context or if there have been a lot of times what you'll find is historians who are

5:22 analyzing it and who have found okay this these couple of parts probably aren't true. This part might be surprisingly true but like that's that's kind of how I go about doing that sort of thing. If you're asking about like how do you tell if like pictures or videos are AI generated, that's a separate set of like skills and tactics. It probably runs longer than we have in this episode, but when I'm just like casually studying history and I come across something that I'm like, I don't know about that. Um, it's also useful when you are reading a history book when you like especially like if it's kind of more on the pop history side of things and you're really enjoying it. That always if if a if it's super entertaining and I find myself like unusually into it sometimes that's just a sign that like a really good writer got a hold of some history, but it's also sometimes a sign that like someone's massaging the facts to make a

6:15 better piece of pop history. So I will search for the book and variations of like historians analyze response from a historian and see are there some professionals who have better or equivalent credentials to the author who have taken issue with some of the claims that they've made, right? The these are all kind of like tactics that that you can use. There's not like a one-sizefits-all.

6:38 And like how many sources are you using for different things? I I feel like never never just accept one source.

6:44 You try not to accept one. Every now and then you run into something where like well there's really one book about this guy or there's like one good book about this thing and I will at least try then to like come across like well what's some like untrue what what are some bad books like what's some [ __ ] that got spread cuz then at least we're broadening it from here's what's in that book to and here's some stuff that spread that's not true or whatever like you you you try to like when I'm at least putting together the podcast I always want to be saying like okay there's there's more than is just in this one source. Like when I was working on the Nuke episodes, I started reading that Annie Jacobson book. I realized that there's a number of people who have some good issues with that book, including some I discussed in the episode. So I I read two other books and I read that uh uh John Rubel's like, you

7:31 know, essays and stuff. Um because they provided like more context and when I looked at the stuff, okay, there's people who have like issues with this part of Jacobson's book, but they seem to speak highly of command and control. So, why don't I use, you know, for that segment of the history, I'll focus more on what command and control or what 15 minutes has to say. Um, and that way, number one, you're just you're getting a more varied you're you're giving the the listeners, the audience something more varied and uh effortful than just here's one book and what one guy said in one book. And you're also hopefully avoiding some of like the most obvious pitfalls.

8:09 Sure. And I mean again just just to say the obvious, never trust the Google AI summary.

8:16 No. No. And you can always when you're googling now, if you just want to avoid that, just wi with whatever you're typing in, add minus AI at the end. Just a space and then minus AI. And it doesn't mean that there won't be AI generated articles or whatever in your responses. That's basically impossible to avoid. But it cuts out the AI generated summary because that alone sometimes it's right. And when it's right, it's like fine, I guess. But the downside is when it's right, you'll read that instead of reading an actual source that probably will tell you more. And it's also hard to tell when it's wrong.

8:50 And there's often just kernels of wrong baked into the right. And you're really doing yourself more of a favor by trying to find a better source. So I find that just not having that little summary there can kind of like avoid you sort of casually almost act cuz sometimes it's accidental. Sometimes you can't just the way your brain works, your eyes work, you're going to read part of that summary even before you scroll down, right?

9:12 Yeah. Even if you are scrolling down to read a real thing, you may catch something in there and not realizing it realize that you're picking up some disinformation. So I I I kind of start with that. Like that's my baseline. I've also you can do the same thing on um uh uh Duck.Go, I think. So I've been using that more. I'm kind of experimenting. I'm hoping to find this next year like a search engine solution that I'm happier with. Uh cuz nothing that we've got right now is better than Google was like 6 years ago. Um but I found duck.go generally better than Google now. And doing the minus AI, you know, thing gets you better like or at least reduces the odds of you getting some bad information.

9:55 Sure. Um, what bastard or bastards have you not done because the research will take too long or they're just too complicated?

10:02 Uh, I mean, I haven't done the Nixon episode yet because there's so many books that I know I need to get through to do it and that's only part of it. I had been planning to do it in 2024. Um, and talked about doing with the Dollup guys. They were on board and my dad got sick and I just haven't gotten like it's been a while now. I should have gotten back into it. I just kind of haven't cuz it's it's such a a it's such a heavy lift.

10:28 Sure. Um I haven't done Mao yet for the same reason. You know, I do those heavy lifting episodes periodically throughout the year. The Nuke one was a heavy lift. You know, there were a number of books involved in that. Himmler was a heavy lift. A number of books involved in that.

10:44 Um you know, the Zizians was a heavy lift. Several comments on Himmler. People want more Himmler.

10:51 People always want more Himmler. That's what everyone was saying when he died. Um Um So like I I'm try I try to do like at least every quarter like a heavy lift effort, you know, longer episode, but there's a lot of those. So I just there's not like a particular reason other than I just didn't feel confident tackling that one at that time.

11:10 Sure. Um this next one says, "What are some unexpected commonalities between bastards other than grew up in poverty and had abusive parents/guardians? Yeah, I wouldn't even say I mean those are commonalities between a number of bastards from specific time periods, but they're not commonalities I think because having being poor or having like a a household where you know you don't have both parents around is a common thing with bastards. It just was really common for kids growing up in those time periods. Like is it should we see it as significant that Hitler was poor and that his dad died when he was young and his mom died tragically when he was not a whole lot older and it really [ __ ] him up. But it's like but those were really normal experiences for just kids in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

12:00 Sickness and disease were a lot easier to, you know, just wipe out portions of your family and poverty of that sort was a lot more common. So it it I think you're kind of like a misnomer if you're if you're looking at that as like and those are common traits of of monsters because even if we're looking at the Nazis, it was more common for the big Nazis to have been comfortable and of like what we might call at least like a middle class upbringing than it was for them to be as like poor and downtrodden as Hitler was. And he really, you know, he had a very tough childhood, but I would say that's almost the exception more than it is the rule. Uh, one of the big rules is a kind of I mean I I it's almost like too much to say not even like a sense of megalomania.

12:48 Um, but a desperation to be somebody to like be someone who matters in your society is like you see it and and like this kind of desperate need to be attached to whatever group is in power, right? It's this yearning to be close to power um that I think often predicts a lot of like the worst people like the the folks who will do anything for their career to like improve the perception of their place in society. That's like the biggest warning sign I think that you see that somebody's going to do some really bad [ __ ]

13:29 Let's go to a quick ad break and then we'll be back with more questions. We're back. Um all right. What initially made you want to become a journalist? Was there a specific journalist or publication that inspired you to take that path?

13:44 I mean, I remember as a kid during the the the Yuguslav civil war um and the you know, the genocide in Bosnia catching some news like live news footage from Sievo and thinking that like wow like what a like what a what a an important serious job. uh maybe I'll do something like that as an adult, like you know, the the the the reporters on the ground that were talking about like what was happening in the city. I remember thinking that like that's that's like something adults do. That's a serious job for serious people. Um and so I I definitely like I that's the first time I can remember thinking that like something in line with the career I wound up picking out sounded intriguing.

14:31 Um, and then I don't know, like as a an 18, 19year-old reading Trans Metropolitan for the first time. It's a comic book series with a journalist as a protagonist that's set in the in the far future. It's very good. Um, it's one of the best illustrated graphic novel series I think I've ever seen. And I I really I I still revisit it every couple of years. That definitely like jazzed me up as a as an adolescent, as a you know, young adult. Um, and then I I was really influenced by Occupy Wall Street. You know, I was there at Zucati Park for a couple of days. Um, I saw little bits of some of the regional ones and I I just was never happy with the coverage that was going on either like the mainstream media coverage or the stuff that was really celebrated at the time, which was like a lot of the people who were like within the movement and kind of doing movement coverage of what was happening.

15:24 I mean, that's kind of where Tim P came out of, right? Um, so I think maybe I was maybe I was just could see that a problem was coming, but I I was I was not happy with what I was seeing. And I I was I was becoming as I became more, you know, in my early 20s more acquainted with like history and particularly like the political history of Latin America um and US interactions in the Middle East. I I grew like more and more frustrated with the news with what I still saw as this like really important job that I thought was being like kind of systemically done badly. Um I took when I was in college I took courses on the Holocaust and remembrance that was about how the Holocaust has been covered in like movies and fiction but also how the Holocaust was reported on at the time and afterwards. Um, a lot of that stuff, by the way, made it into the episodes about how like the liberal media uh helped fascism get a foothold,

16:20 you know, the last time. Um, so really since I was in kind of like 2021, I've been I've been thinking about like the shortcomings of our of our media and how disastrous those shortcomings are. And I still kind of fundamentally believe what I did as a kid that it's like a really important job reporting on conflict especially for serious people and there's just not a lot of them doing it. You know, there are there are some great reporters obviously much better than me out there reporting on conflict but I think the bulk of what gets written about war and genocide and conflict around the world including you know in the United States protests and the like is bad. Uh, and I guess I became aware of that at a pretty young age.

17:05 Just made me think about when I was in college, I took early on in college, I got approval to take a class. I was a freshman. Everyone else was a senior in the class, but the professor for some reason let me take it and it was a psychology of ethics class. And uh, I had to do this report that was like most of what I worked on in that semester. and it was all about um you know the ethics of the insanity defense for mass shooters and it was right after the Aurora shooting uh the the movie theater Batman shooting and um I don't I I think a lot of that really shaped the way that I thought about people which I think impacts a lot of our work. So, I don't know. It just kind of takes like one class. I feel like sometimes it's just one one or one assignment really to like influence you creatively.

18:00 Yeah. Yeah. It it is cuz when I think back on like my time in school, I can think I can I can only really remember like one teacher, two teachers by name that I had in like the whole 12 years.

18:13 Yeah. But I I remember moments more than one like three or four. But there's a but I do there are like some moments and and really for the most part they were singular moments like three or four of them that like were absolutely foundational to who I became which is always interesting to me the degree to which like both great like school is just a complete blur like I barely remember it and also I can point out like three or four moments where I'm like well that changed everything you know.

18:41 Yeah, I guess that's how it is sometimes. It's definitely how it was for me. Yeah. Um, there's several different questions that basically sum up to the same same question from folks that they they're asking who's the oldest bastard in history.

18:57 The oldest bastard like I'm I'm assuming they mean like chronologically like the first bastard linear. Yeah,

19:05 that was several different certainly don't know his name, right? like there because here's the thing and this is because I I've talked a lot you know about like um something that gets that that anarchists bring up quite frequently which is how you had a lot of in prehistory among these huntergatherer tribes a lot of like extremely egalitarian communities right particularly compared to like a lot of the settled cultures that followed them right where there were was significantly more equality between men and women uh there were significant ificantly flatter hierarchies, you know, a lot less power being invested in single individuals. And I I talked about um in the manifesto episodes about like the that ekong ritual like the shaming of the meat to like try and stop young men who are are hunters from getting too big an ego because they think that hunting is all that matters because it's like the cool sexy job to have, right?

20:01 Um, and if you're focusing on that, you're ignoring how, well, most of our calories come from people like gathering nuts, and a lot of that work gets done by women. And also, people need clothes, people need tools, all of these things that are just as important as going out and killing a deer and in fact necessary precursors that are a lot less sexy. So, if you let like the young hunter boys get, you know, a a [ __ ] uh ego about them because like, well, I'm the one who brought home the meat, then you're ignoring everyone else's contributions.

20:27 That makes your your whole community weaker, right? and it creates the opportunity at least that one of those young men's going to lose their [ __ ] and bring terrible terrible suffering onto the rest of the community, right? Um but I think when we talk about that, we talk about all of these different sort of like um uh rituals and like cere like ceremonies and rules that different like societies adopted to deal with the problem of power to ensure that they had flatter hierarchies. Right? There's a tendency then to kind of forget something which is that those were not those were not part of those societies because they were more enlightened than modern people or at least than the people that followed them. It was not like oh we we used to understand how to be good as a society right uh or as human beings like we used to have better cultures we used to be more ethical we used to treat each other

21:20 better and we stopped. I think it's more accurate to say like, well, all of those different like rules and and and uh and practices are evidence of the fact that there's always been a problem with power in human cultures and that individual people taking too much power for themselves has always been a danger. And our ancestors recognize that and have throughout the entire history of human events. And some of cultures developed methods of dealing with it. But ultimately we have to assume all of those methods hit points of failure, right? Because those cultures didn't last, right? And they didn't beat out in a lot of cases the more stratified and hierarchical cultures uh that followed them. And so while I think it's really valuable to look at here are solutions different cultures have proposed the problem of power. Um the fact that those they had to come up with so many different solutions is evidence of the

22:16 fact that that problem is is kind of universal, right? And that hints at a long history of bastards of individual [ __ ] and cadras of [ __ ] um that have sought in every kind of society, including ancient huntergatherer societies to try and take much more than their fair share from everybody else. Right? And so there's certainly a long prehistory of nameless bastards out there. And I I think it behooves us to remember that both because I am one of those people who says we should be looking at what other older different cultures developed as ways to deal with the problem of power without pretending that they definitely had it figured out because again none of that stuff lasted forever. Right.

22:58 Right. Let's take another quick break. We'll be back with a couple more questions. We're back. Um, Robert, do you listen to music while you write scripts for the pod? And uh, what what's sometimes what's some of the

23:10 I used to do more? I used to listen to more music while I was writing. The last like year or so, I haven't done it as much. I don't know why.

23:17 Do you have like a They always ask NBA players like, "What what's the song you listen to before game time?" Do you have a song you listen to before pod time?

23:26 I mean, not before recording a podcast. I have like different bands that I listen to while I'm uh writing more often than others or different like one place I used to go a lot is the white light uh mixes. If you just type like white light mixes in, it's like a set of like hour hour and a half long like mixes that are meant for people to like drive to. I think that was the initial idea is that these are great for like road trips and stuff and so different DJs will do like an hour hour and a half long set that you can kind of zone out to while you're driving. I found them useful over the years for writing um a lot and uh yeah uh that's that's I mean I I listen to I do I listen to a lot of like live bluegrass shows for whatever reason I find that helps me concentrate.

24:12 Last night as I was working on what'll be some of the first episodes of 2025 I was listening to Green Sky Bluegrass at Red Rocks. Um, I'll listen to, you know, my SCA Street while I'm I'm writing, but again, a lot of the last year I haven't really been listening to much while writing. And I I don't really know why. I It comes and goes in waves.

24:32 Have you ever started an episode on someone commonly known to be a bastard only to realize you actually agreed with them or decided they weren't worthy of being a bastard? I mean, like the Bo Brummel episodes, uh, I started thinking like, oh, this is the guy who like ruined men's fashion and did a lot of damage to the psyches of of of men for generations by locking people into these like because that's how he gets portrayed a lot as he invented the suit and made men's fashion boring and made men scared to express themselves through clothing. I don't actually think that's a fair summary of what Bo Rumble did in his life. It certainly was not fair to his intent. I think he was a much more sympathetic person than that. But I also thought there's a lot of bastardy in that story because I mean just English culture during the period of time that he was alive was a [ __ ] nightmare. Um so I decided like well this is still good for

25:23 an episode. Um, sure. I have there's been a couple of like times not really worth diving into where I've I've heard like one story about someone that sucked like a celebrity or whatever and I've looked into like, okay, can I get like an episode or is this just somebody did something shitty once? Uh,

25:40 Katy Perry, we talked about the Katy Perry episode where I thought this the whole thing with her and the nuns there there's this like controversy over this house she was buying.

25:51 It's not as bad as it seems. It's like I don't I'm not saying I go into bat for her as a good person, but I don't think she's an interesting subject for an episode right?

26:01 Yeah. It's not It's less that like I I don't think I've ever had it like where oh no, this person's a hero. Although I do find some things about Bo Bruml to be kind of admirable, but it's more that like ah this person just is like a person who did some shitty stuff and that's not really a bastard, right? Like we're not we're not declaring someone a bastard just because they like had flaws and did bad. We've all done bad things. We're not all interesting to hear about for two hours.

26:27 Yeah. Which bastard, past or present, would be the best podcast guest to cover a different horrible person?

26:34 Oh man. I mean, honestly, I feel like if if I if he was alive, I would make [ __ ] $50 million uh doing a podcast with Elron Huard where I just explain different cults to Elron Hubard and he critiques them. Like he explains, "Ah, no. This is where you [ __ ] up. This is where you rent a classic. It would be the It would be the least responsible podcast of all time. I I would deserve to go to prison for making that show because it would just create a new generation of hyper competent cult leaders. But it would be super interesting just getting LR on the record critiquing other cult leaders cuz they're all worse than him. He was the best at that.

27:12 Yeah, 100%. Um, all right guys, we we'll be back on Thursday to answer more of your questions. Any final thoughts, Robert? Uh, you know, in the new year, [ __ ] it. I don't know. Whatever it is to you, [ __ ] it. Cool.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: 2026 Edition | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"?

Sophie Lerman (Host), Robert (Guest).

What is "Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: 2026 Edition | BEHIND THE BASTARDS" about?

The discussion reflects on the transition from the holiday season back to regular life, highlighting a sense of mixed feelings about re-engagement with reality. Robert shares lighthearted moments from their time off, including receiving unique gifts from Sophie, such as weapons that have become part of their annual tradition, emphasizing their camaraderie and shared experiences.

What is mentioned in this Behind the Bastards episode?

12 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Sophie Lerman, Google LLC, Occupy Wall Street, Annie Jacobson, DuckDuckGo, Heinrich Himmler. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: 2026 Edition | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"?

The episode runs 28 min; the transcript is about 5,380 words in 69 timestamped sections.

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